Views on the Presidency before McCain met the economy.

As a teenager, I can safely say this is surely one of the most important moments of my life: The presidential campaigns. I happen to be for Obama. This isn’t because I’ve spent most of my life only remembering the “‘Dubya” Administration. It’s because I actually agree with him. It’s not because I’m a “godless liberal” as Ann Coulter would put it, though I do lean quite a bit to the left. Plus, I’m not a communist or a Nazi. The man has started a political “revolution” for a reason.

This election means too much to me. Surely it is the most crucial decision Americans will have to make in presidential history. There isn’t a time that I know of where the stakes have been this high. No matter how cliché the following sounds, it’s true. Our economy is heading downward into a recession and towards turmoil. In addition, 47 million Americans are without healthcare. Think about that for a second. It’s almost impossible to even think that a country couldn’t afford healthcare for all of their citizens, let alone make it cost so much. It seems too grim an idea. But it’s reality. Probably the most “popular” issue is the War in Iraq. We have a reported 4,000 plus soldiers dead. They didn’t want death. They didn’t deserve death. No one who fought or fights for this war or any war should.

When I look at Senator McCain, I wonder what’s become of politics. Not even the Republican Party should be content with this guy. The only two major arguments for him are that he’s a war hero, and that he’s a maverick, according to conservatives. At the RNC, Fred Thompson said himself that being a prisoner of war doesn’t give you a ticket into the presidency, but it shows “character”. Hate to be blunt, but if you end up divorcing your first wife after returning from the war, the whole good “character” aspect turns neutral. It also helps when he reveals by himself he graduated 894th out of the 899 cadets in his class at the Naval Academy.

There’s just too much at risk in this election to royally mess up. McCain’s record, not the man himself, proves that he’s not ready. It consists of a variety of flip flops, contradictions, and disturbing decisions. That’s what convinced me to not support him. If you look at McCain minus the senatorial career, he’s a war hero who sacrificed his life for his country, A.K.A. country first, his slogan. However, being a lieutenant commander (0-4) is under the rank of a junior officer, so he’s not exactly a Colonel Harry Truman (0-6) or even close to a General of the Army (the highest ranking), Douglas MacArthur. In other words, his military record isn’t exactly top notch. Senator John Kerry is, quite honestly, probably more of a “war hero” than Senator McCain, and possibly as inconsistent too.

The flip flops of McCain are scattered across search engines like Google and Yahoo, but they’re not at all hard to find. All you have to do is type in just “McCain flip flop” and you get about 2,980,000 results. The contradictions and gaffes are also pretty easy to find. But no one in the media is really reporting it as much as they should. By it, I mean the mess ups. For instance, the fact Senator McCain voted against Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and then decided to visit the NAACP. The fact he has voted against various bills that would have provided billions of dollars for the troops in Iraq, despite fervently supporting the war. The fact he has even voted against equal pay for equal work for women. However, the most important would probably be that he’s voted with the President 95% of the time last year, and 100% this year… so far. No, I’m not saying this to become part of a much larger smear campaign. This essentially disproves the idea that Senator McCain is a maverick now. Maybe eight years ago, but definitely not now.

In spite all of this, there are still flip flops left to discuss. He has been against and now for overturning Roe v. Wade. McCain had been staunch in keeping his pro-life stance, but had said he originally would never overturn Roe v. Wade if he was president. He has also opposed then supported the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. He’s been for then against ethanol. He has even gone so far as to abandon legislation named after him for major campaign finance reform. He’s also contradicted himself on his own criticisms. For example, in a response to Michelle Obama’s comments of being proud of her country for the first time in her adult life, McCain said he was also proud despite a quote from him saying “I didn’t really didn’t love America until I was deprived of her company” in reference to his P.O.W. experiences. He’s also stated not to run negative campaign ads… I don’t have to explain what happened next.

These contradictions, hypocrisies, and boo boos of Senator McCain obviously don’t take away from the criticisms of Barack Obama. He has moved to the center with his position on the FISA Bill, and flip flopped on the issues of a strategic petroleum reserve and public financing. Also, neither he nor Senator McCain has a true Universal Health Care plan because neither has established a mandate for all citizens. Senator Obama has only established a mandate for children. Senator Obama is also criticized for his tendency to say “present” for votes rather then yes or no. It should be noted that this was out of a grand total of more than 4000 votes he had made out of his entire senate career, so his percentage on “present” votes is less than 3%.

Nevertheless, the most controversial criticisms of Obama are as follows: Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, and Tony Rezko. It’s not by any means difficult to emasculate these tags. The clip of Jeremiah Wright’s sermon was only 30 seconds. The actual clip was between 9-10 minutes, and it discussed how America was wrong on its part in permitting slavery and war, specifically the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He also mentioned how we had, in a sense, committed terrorism by permitting these sorts of bombings (though bombing them prevented any Japanese terrorism and the prolonging of WWII), and how this caused many more deaths than the events of September 11^th, 2001. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s certainly not terrible to discuss failures of our country. That’s what makes America what it is; we have the freedom to do so. Also, Senator Obama doesn’t necessarily have to agree with everything Jeremiah Wright spits out of his mouth; it’s a naïve concept. The senator can disagree with Wright, whether the relationship has lasted for 30 seconds or 20 years.

Regarding Louis Farrakhan, this is guilt by association. What this means is that just because Obama knows Jeremiah Wright, who happens to know Farrakhan, Obama immediately knows and associates himself with Farrakhan. However, even media personalities like Sean Hannity are associated with racist bigots like Hal Turner, but that doesn’t necessarily make Hannity racist. This same instance occurs with John McCain and Jerry Falwell, who claimed gays and lesbians responsible for 9/11. That doesn’t make McCain crazy because he knows Falwell. Finally, regarding Tony Rezko, Senator Obama has given the majority of the money from the “slumlord” to charity. To be specific, around $44,000 out of the $50,000-$60,000 Rezko gave for his political career.

Let me just sum it up now. America has dug itself into one of the tightest spots in its history. This election could be all or nothing, literally. We need a president that can be as close to ideal as possible based on the current situations. It’s now or never. We must fix our broken economy, fight the corruption that lingers across our own government halls, and restore America’s faith in government itself. Maybe, just maybe, we can really do it with Barack Obama… yes we can.

The Economy… or what was left of it.

America’s economy is doomed. Here’s the problem.

Our gross domestic product (GDP) is screwed.

But wait… that doesn’t make sense, does it? After all, we’re around first to second globally when it comes to GDP, coming in at about thirteen trillion dollars. That’s great, but there’s a problem. We’re also in a massive pool of debt: ten trillion dollars worth. When your national debt comes close to your GDP, something’s fishy.

But how did we enter such a huge debt? We’ve always been in debt. Only the conservative democrat Andrew Jackson managed to significantly reduce it, but that was very short lived when the Panic of 1837 occurred. Since then, it’s dramatically increased for the most part, especially in the past twenty years. Ronald Reagan was a huge part of this, which means, yes nitwits, Reaganomics doesn’t work. The “trickle down” theory only concentrates the wealth on the richest members of America.

The idea was, and still is, that if tax breaks are offered to the rich, they’ll invest in things like charities, factories, etc. Nobody seemed to remember that America is now part of a global economy, so the rich will probably invest more in areas where they can get the highest return/profit, outside of the U.S, which is why the policy has failed on a very large scale. So when McCain says he’s offering tax breaks to the rich because by some miracle that’ll help out small business, he’s just flat out wrong.

Clinton did increase debt, but not by much. Rather, he leveled it out. How? His idea of achieving fiscal responsibility: “Pay as you go.” What this meant was that if taxes were cut, so was spending. Revenue increased extremely, and everything seemed to be going just magnificently.

And then Bush came.

Following the failed concepts of Reaganomics and neo-conservatism, President Bush Jr. managed to increase our debt to GDP ratio up to more than 60%. Of course, the Afghan War (by the way, what happened to that?) and the Iraq War ($10 billion a month while the California-sized country itself has a $79 billion dollar surplus) did contribute. But should we have been there in the first place is the main question. One is yes, the other maybe, probably no… actually, almost definitely no.

So what can we do to fix the economy? When Obama says “change comes from the bottom up,” it’s not just a catchy phrase. It’s an economic plan. By increasing the productivity of workers across the United States, global capital will naturally come to us if we can increase our net import/export value from the GDP. We export more than we import… that’s bad. If we work on more “American based” products, and not relying on China so much for, well, um, everything, that would definitely lower our debt right now. It wouldn’t decrease it, but it would significantly lower it. Reducing energy costs is also another major factor. The idea is to avoid oil in it’s entirety by focusing on alternate energy sources: wind, solar, tide/hydroelectric, etc. Nuclear power is just too risky, and offshore drilling just doesn’t work. It would only have a major effect in 10 years. The argument then becomes if we had used offshore drilling when Bush became president, none of these energy issues would’ve happened. That’s great, but this is now, and there’s no point in waiting another ten years using the product that got us into the crisis in the first place.

However, the main way to increase productivity is through health care, i.e. Universal Health Care (UHC). Whether it is single payer or multi-payer, single probably being the best choice, Americans wouldn’t have to worry nearly as much about the hellhole that is private insurance. Premiums would be almost non-existent or even totally gone. This means employers won’t have to pay as much as before. Jobs would increase because of the new portability of the increase, and so would wages because, again, employers are paying less for health care, so they have more freedom. Businesses would end up prospering just because of UHC. In fact, the National Coalition on Health Care released a report in 2005 showing a single payer system for UHC could even save America $1.1 trillion dollars over 10 years. Our current system using the free market guarantees us that we can never get UHC because the free market makes sure private insurers don’t insure those who really are sick because they’re of such high cost.

So, what’s the conclusion?

…

You have no choice but to vote Obama. Really.